The Entrepreneur's Constant Nightmare

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

The largest part of my practice is work for small businesses and their owners, and I can tell you that this is a very accurate reflection of the problems created by that breed of customer / client who expects Cadillac work for bicycle prices and thinks that the business should be grateful for the privilege.

LawPro Warning to lawyers re equipment loan fraud

LawPro tells the profession:

Our LAWPRO E-News mailing last week prompted several calls from
Ontario lawyers. From information we have gathered, it seems
clear to us that there is an organized scheme underway to
defraud Ontario lawyers using matters involving small business
equipment loans. These matters all share the same basic timeline
and circumstances, and in some cases, the same purported
individuals or entities (a lender from Halifax).

In all cases, about one month ago a previously unknown client
retained the lawyer to do an incorporation. The client presented
realistic looking photo ID (a newer Ontario driver licence). The
client paid in full for the incorporation.

In the last week the client returned to the firm asking the
lawyer to act on an equipment purchase loan matter. Loan amounts
are approximately $350,000 and the loan is to come from a
Halifax-based lender (there is someone answering the phone for
the lender - we suspect the fraudster or an accomplice). The
client is pushing to have the loan completed as quickly as
possible. The loan proceeds are to go to a third-party
corporation (not the client's new corporation).

There are clear badges of fraud in the above scenario. The
lawyers' suspicions were also raised for one or more of the
following reasons: the client and corporate addresses were the
same; it is unusual for a brand new corporation with no apparent
purpose to get a loan in this amount; the only security for the
loan was a promissory note or GSA; the client had only a cell
number or the home phone number given was not working, and the
address on the driver's licence is not a real one.

Over the past year, almost twenty of these types of fraud
schemes were reported to LAWPRO during the various holiday/long
weekend times. Please be wary if you are handling a matter that
appears the same or is similar to the ones described above.
Clearly there appears to be an organized fraud scheme targeting
Ontario lawyers. We encourage lawyers and their staff to be
extra careful in the next few weeks. Remember that these are
very sophisticated frauds. The letters and other documents
provided by the client and the certified cheques or money orders
received from the lender will look legitimate - but turn out to
be counterfeit. Cross-checks and searches on the names,
addresses, serial numbers or other information in the
documentation provided will prove to be false.

Please read LAWPRO's new Fraud Fact Sheet at
http://www.practicepro.ca/practice/pdf/FraudInfoSheet.pdf to
learn more about the red flags to look out for. Or see the
practicePRO Fraud page http://www.practicepro.ca/fraud for
information on fraud and how to avoid it.

"Six Ways to Stall Estate Planning"

I recently came across an interesting article, "Six Ways to Stall Estate Planning" [PDF] by Thomas Junkin, Senior Vice President of the Fiduciary Trust Company of Canada. In it he examines six mental roadblocks we run into, internal barriers blocking us from our estate planning. While the short summary below is useful it is no substitute for reading the whole two-page article [PDF]; it contains much that anybody who must ponder estate planning (which is pretty much everybody) should know.

1. "I am too busy to worry about estate planning right now."
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that estate planning is neither important nor urgent, Junkin urges: while proper estate planning does take time it is necessary to deal with its complexity immediately. This is especially important in light of the fact that estate planning isn't an exercise in fill-in-the-blanks will preparation, especially in this era of blended families, rapidly changing family law rules and increasingly complex potential decisions.

2. "Thinking about death, especially my own, is frightening."
Yes, it is, no question about it, but it need be faced. That's why I always open my presentations on wills and estates planning [PDF] with this:
Junkin wisely suggests that you make estate planning an intellectual exercise rather than an emotional one. It is difficult, because thinking about executors, beneficiaries and guardians for one's children is an emotional issue. But properly structuring the planning makes it easier to deal with it.

3. "I am confused and intimidated by the complexity of estate planning."
Junkin cautions against falling into either of two extremes: being so disinterested in the fine points that one doesn't proceed, or being so details-oriented that one seeks to become an expert before proceeding. I have been an advocate for some years of detailed estate planning questionnaires which allow people to move through their process at a steady, measured pace which they can adjust to their own comfort level.

4. "My family relationships are strained."
"Awkward family situations lead to procrastination in two ways: Fear of confrontation with your family members, and fear of discussing potentially embarrassing family matters with someone outside the family." Junkin and I are in agreement on the importance of using the skills of your estate planner to help you resolve these emotional dilemma: working with somebody who will help you through these difficult decisions makes those problems solvable.

5. "I think estate planning must be very expensive."
It doesn't have to be expensive, but it will cost money to do properly. It's baffling to many lawyers that people who will not hesitate to spend $1,500 to fix a broken head gasket on their car will balk at spending $400.00 for properly done wills and powers of attorney. You can always take a taxi if the car doesn't work; you can't raise yourself from the dead to retroactively do all of the things for your family that you should have done when you were alive.

6. "I don’t know what I want to do with my estate."
This is where a estate planning in cooperation with your solicitor is vital. Much of the uncertainty comes from not knowing where to begin: many people don't even know the questions to ask, and it's the questions that provide the answers. Find a solicitor who will work through the whole process with you and who can provide access to specialized advice and services (financial planners, etc.) where required for the more sophisticated estates.

Mr. Junkin invites readers to go to Fiduciary Trust's Perspective library and browse their past articles and download copies.

Drug Decriminalization Policy Forum - 2nd Follow-up

In a follow up to this post, and this followup to that post, American civil liberties writer Glenn Greenwald is interviewed by Reason.tv, an American libertarian website:

Return of the Corvée?

Most of us sat through history lessons on the seigneurial system in New France. (History was very badly organized in the Ontario curricula in the 1970s and early 1980s and so I had to take it three times before Grade 10!) In those classes we became familiar with the term "corvée", which is "labour, often but not always unpaid, that persons in power have authority to compel their subjects to perform". They key words, naturally, are "unpaid" and "compel". These words came to mind today as I sat through my Law Society webcast of The Annotated Retainer Agreement.

Ms. Sharon Shore of Epstein, Cole, (a very respected Toronto family law firm) gave a presentation on retainers in family law cases. One of the things that she has noted is that courts are increasingly requiring lawyers in family law cases to stay on the record and continue to represent their clients for further stages, long past the time when the client has paid -- or has the ability to pay -- the lawyers's fees. Ms. Shore noted that she had recently seen a case where a lawyer had to stay on the record for an additional two months and perform all the work to be done during that time. While she did not say so specifically one must concede that it is unlikely that the lawyer in that case will ever see payment for all that work.

Lawyers often have to deal with the conflicting demands on them as professionals on the one hand with being business people on the other. This problem often takes quite literal form as the caselaw in assessment cases (where the quantum of a lawyer's bill is examined) and professional liability cases are often in direct conflict. One assessment case may say that in Situation X a lawyer can't collect for making a judgment call to proceed with Action Y because it wasn't part of the retainer agreement and the client can't be forced to pay for something that the lawyer independently thought was in the client's best interests. However, a solicitor's negligence case may have a holding that in a same or similar Situation X the lawyer was obliged to perform Action Y because it was necessary for the client and that the duties incumbent upon a professional transcend the usual "no pay no work" underpinning of a normal commercial service transaction. These dilemmas are usually resolved by lawyers' governing bodies, insurers, courts and assessment officers in favour of the client. (The myth that judges and lawyers protect other lawyers is just that: a myth. It is rather closer to the truth to say what one lawyer attending the session said: that the lawyers are seen as a source of fiscal indemnification for the mistakes of others. The reader will thus start to get some small idea of why law is listed as a "disabling profession" in the book of that name and why they suffer higher burnout, suicide and alcoholism rates than the general population; having to square a circle under great stress and externally imposed demands will do that.)

It is a given that the court processes are becoming unaffordable and that access to justice is a vital and indispensable necessity for a civilized and complex society. I do have profound concerns, though, about a system which responds to problems created jointly by its own structural flaws, governmental under-budgeting, conflicting demands, increasing complexity and sophistication and information-intensiveness, and, most of all, hugely increased public demand by simply demanding that lawyers work for free. Nobody is demanding that the judges work for free, or the court clerks, or the expert witnesses, or the doctors, psychologists or counsellors, or court reporters or process servers ... of all the people being paid to be in a court only the lawyers can be and are arbitrarily deemed to be available without charge.

The problems of the court system are very large and demand immediate attention, but telling lawyers and lawyers alone among all the involved professionals that their need to be paid for their time and effort is now an optional extra is a cop-out, and a highly selective and hypocritical one at that.

Quebec's insurers will have to be more specific and do so earlier.

The Quebec Court of Appeal has come down with an interesting decision in Lombard Canada Ltd. v. Ezeflow Inc., (decision in French only).

Ezeflow is a manufacturer of pipes for oil-drilling platforms and Lombard was its general commercial liability insurance provider. Flaws showed up in some installed Ezeflow pipes and that company made a claim on its insurance. Lombard refused on four grounds and later relied on another clause in the insurance agreement. The matter went to trial, Ezeflow won at trial and Lombard took the matter to the Court of Appeal, where the appeal was upheld. However it noted that Lombard could not use an exclusion which was not used as a reason for denial at the outset of the action. As Kelly Harris notes [infra], "Quebec courts do not recognize the doctrine of estoppel [fn1], which prevents new defences from being introduced once a case has begun." Jean-Charles René of Ogilvy, Renault notes,

In Quebec, the courts have refused to apply the doctrine of estoppel, but have recognized a similar concept in civil law, the "fin de non-recevoir" which bars an insurer from adding to its reasons for denial of coverage on the basis that it is deemed to have waived the right to do so. According to the case law, such a waiver does not need to have been expressly stated in writing, but may be tacit, provided it is unequivocal, i.e., there is no doubt as to the insurer's intention to waive a clause in the policy. Some writers have observed that it is harder to prove a "fin de non-recevoir" than to prove estoppel because the civil law concept requires proof that, by its representations, the insurer indicated its intention to modify its rights.

Ezeflow has now ended the insurers' practice of reserving a right to bring up any clause later on; they must now commit at the outset of the action. M. René:

[I]nsureds would be well advised to require their insurer to state its position precisely as soon as it is apprised of a situation that could trigger a claim, thereby forcing the insurer, so to speak, "to make its bed and lie in it".

Footnotes:

fn1 - Quebec is the only province which does not use a "common law" system (like that of England or America) for the resolution of non-criminal disputes; it uses a "civil law" system more akin to European models.]

Further Reading

The entry above is only a cursory examination of the case. I strongly recommend that any interested reader read these articles:

“Quebec Court Of Appeal Weighs In On Scope Of Coverage Under Cgl Policy For Costs Of Removing Insured’s Defective Products”. Nicholl Paskell-Mede, Lawyers.

“Quebec Court of Appeal Warns Insurers To Specify All the Reasons for Denial of Coverage.”
Jean-Charles René, Ogilvie Renault.

“Court tells insurers to lie in the bed they made.” Kelly Harris, Canadian Lawyer Magazine, February, 2009. [Note: Canadian Lawyer uses an unusual digital version of its magazine. You will have to go to the link and then flip the pages as if you were reading the magazine in its treeware format.]

An update on two previous posts

On February 5, 2009 I did a post on parental alienation. Since then the judge who has written a book on the subject, Harvey P. Brownstone, has done an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail on this topic.

On March 31 I did a post on some hysterical American prosecutorial reactions to "sexting". Noted criminal defence attorney Eddie Greenspan has since written a piece on the issue.

Missing Child: The suspect looks like this

"The composite drawing of a female suspect, said to be 19 to 25 years old, about 5 foot 1 and some 125 pounds, that was released last night is based on a description provided by an "independent witness," police said this morning."

(Toronto Star)

Victoria "Tori" Stafford is 8 years old and resides in Woodstock. Victoria attended school at Oliver Stephen's Public School in Woodstock, and left school when dismissed at 3:25 PM. Victoria had invited two friends to her house to watch a movie after school, and she was seen leaving the school. A video tape shows Victoria walking northbound on Fyfe Street in Woodstock with a white female. The time on the videotape is 3:32 PM. The female is wearing a white, waist length winter coat and may be carrying a black bag. The video shows Victoria and the female cross the street and continue walking east at the intersection of Walter Street.

Victoria was wearing black and white running shoes, black leotards, a black velvet pleated skirt, an army green coloured "Hanna Montana" T-shirt that had pink stitching with a hood, a black "Hanna Montana" winter coat with a hood trimmed with white fur, a black head hand, and butterfly earings. She was carrying a purple coloured "Bratz" bag.

OPP Website on the Victoria "Tori" Stafford disappearance.

If you have any information, please call the OPP at 1-877-9FIND ME (1-877-934-6363) Toll Free in Canada or email them at Tips or at opp.isb.resolve@ontario.ca, or call (705) 330-4144 for local or outside of Canada.

Missing Child: Victoria Stafford

Drug Decriminalization Policy Forum - Follow-up

On March 14, 2009 I provided details to the Cato Institute's policy forum on Portugal's experience with drug decriminalization. The policy forum is now complete and the video can be found here.

You can download a podcast (in mp3 format) of the event here.

A victory for sanity

Yesterday I blogged about a crazy American case where a disturbingly obsessed American prosecutor went after a bunch of teenage girls, seeking to have them jailed as child pornographers for having pictures of themselves in bras. Fortunately the federal court in question isn't as Salemish as he is:

PHILADELPHIA, March 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three teenage girls caught with sexually suggestive pictures of themselves on their cell phones.

U.S. District Judge James Munley said he was issuing a restraining order on Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick ..... [snip]

Witold Walczack, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, welcomed the legal decision.

"This country needs to have a discussion about whether prosecuting minors as child pornographers for merely being impulsive and naive is the appropriate way to address the serious consequences that can result from sexting," he said.[snip]

Going too far: Where the Americans go we should fear to tread

Lawyers, Guns and Money is one of my favourite American political blogs. It touches on politics, gender relations and defence and strategic studies issues, all of which are fascinating to me.

There is a recent post entitled "The Police State and the Private" which is a worthwhile read. It addresses in small part the disturbing tendency of American police and prosecutorial authorities to strip away not only rights but basic human dignity from youth simply because they are in school and their elders are downright hysterical about drugs. The fear-based attitude itself is nothing new: the statement of the Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie that schools exist to keep a large and potentially troublesome portion of the population occupied is many decades old, for example. But when taken this far it is insane and verges on child abuse.

"On the basis of an uncorroborated tip from the culpable eighth grader, public middle school officials searched futilely for prescription-strength ibuprofen by strip-searching thirteen-year-old honor student Savana Redding. "

Fortunately, the court concluded that:

"the school officials violated Savana's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The strip search of Savana was neither "justified at its inception," New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341 (1985), nor, as a grossly intrusive search of a middle school girl to locate pills with the potency of two over-the-counter Advil capsules, "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances" giving rise to its initiation. Id. Because these constitutional principles were clearly established at the time that middle school officials directed and conducted the search, the school official in charge is not entitled to qualified immunity from suit for the unconstitutional strip search of Savana."

The American blogger aimai nails it in a post on that LGM thread:

The weirdest thing of all to me about these school cases in general and this one in particular is how bizarre it is that almost everyone concerned just assumes that the same tactics appropriate to prisons and armies (both situations in which individual members voluntarily or involuntarily give up their civil rights and can be presumed to be hostile to the rules governing their behavior) are applied to children seeking education in a communal setting.

A school is not a prison. School children are not prisoners. Moroever, the interests of a student are not, and can not be, understood to be different from those of administrators or the administrators want the wrong thing for the children.
[...]
Whatever you think of the kid the correct pedagogical strategy is to create a space in which the school is not a prison, the teachers and staff are not the enemy. And if you can't do that to start with you can't teach the kids. You've already failed.

The same lunacy is found in a case where teenagers took pictures of each other in bra and panties at a slumber party are being threatened with child pornography charges. (For more details please read the post found at Radley Balko's blog, "The Agitator", and the links below.)

Sadly, this is not an uncommon bit of lunacy:

• In one Florida a judge convicted a 17 year old boy and a 16 year old girl of child pornography because they took digital pictures of each other whilst fooling around, a decision that was upheld on appeal. One judge therein spoke of the harm that these pictures could do to these children. ( Frankly, if I was seventeen and told that I had a choice between a lifetime as a convicted criminal labelled as a sexual deviant on the one hand, and the embarassment of somebody seeing me have fumbling teen sex on the other I'd reach for the camera and red face be damned.)
• In Ohio a 15 year old girl is facing felony charges and forced registration as a sex offender for sending pictures of herself to classmates (and charges against the classmates may be pending).
• In Denton, Texas, a 13 year old boy is under arrest for receiving a picture sent by a female teenage classmate and thus having it on his cellphone.

Watch the video regarding the Wyoming, Pennsylvania case. I trust that I'm not the only person who feels uncomfortable with a prosecutor upon being asked "what exactly did she do wrong?" state "that's not the issue before the federal court"? (Please do remember that the United States Supreme Court has held that actual innocence of the crime is not a bar to a valid conviction, absent an underlying constitutional violation.) He is bringing ludicrous charges which will put a young girl in prison for years and label her a sex offender for life for the crime of taking a picture of herself in a bra at a slumber party, tried to blackmail the child into a bogus rehab program and when faced with Constitutional oversight says that the court shouldn't even be involved. He seems profoundly put out by the fact that anything could get in the way of a DA charging somebody, even if the charge is crazy and he should be ashamed of himself. (This does not even address the problems inherent with such programs. Two Pennsylvania judges were recently caught accepting bribes to send innocent teenagers to jail; private prison operators gave them money for every kid that was sent to them. Efforts are being made to clear the children's names, but it does rather beg the question of whether sending children to jail for harmless activity should be permitted at all.)

No-one would argue that "sexting" is a remarkably foolish thing to do; in a worst case scenario it can even lead to tragedy. But placing poor-judgment teenagers into the same category as the vermin who ogle pictures of children is bizarre and destructive.

Our Canadian courts have flaws, and our society has flaws, but our cops, prosecutors and judicial system have not completely taken leave of their senses. They aren't putting children in prison for doofus idiocy yet, nor are these professionals demanding that we do so. For that we should be profoundly grateful, thank them, and very, very wary of any Canadian figure who starts to look longingly south for hideous ideas posing as good ones.

Further reading:

• "The new pornographers: What's more disturbing -- that teens are texting each other naked pictures of themselves, or that it could get them branded as sex offenders for life?" - Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon Magazine, February 20, 2009.
• "Students Sue Prosecutor in Cellphone Photos Case", Sean D. Hamill, New York Times, Marc 25, 2009.
• "`Sexting' teens strike back!", Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon Magazine, March 27, 2009.

Networking Wednesday: March 4, 2009

At the Small Business Centre:
Me on the right, Mr. John Travis, a sales and marketing specialist, on the left.

And I got a lot of compliments on the tie.

Business Social Law No. 12

The person who reschedules a business social event twice is responsible for the tab.

Business Social Law No. 11

The person who cancels a business social event is responsible for rescheduling it.

"Drug Decriminalization in Portugal" - Has it worked?

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal - Online Policy Forum, Cato Institute.

(What is the Cato Institute?)

Friday, April 3, 2009 - 12:00 PM EDT (1600h UDT "Zulu" Time)

From the Cato Institute Website:

Featuring Glenn Greenwald, Attorney and Best-selling Author; with comments by Peter Reuter, Department of Criminology, University of Maryland; moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.

The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Go to this page at the above time to watch the event live.

In 2001, Portugal began a remarkable policy experiment, decriminalizing all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Some predicted disastrous results—that drug addiction rates would soar and the country would become a haven for "drug tourists." Now that several years have passed, policy experts can study the results. In a new paper for the Cato Institute, attorney and author Glenn Greenwald closely examines the Portugal experiment and concludes that the doomsayers were wrong. There is now a widespread consensus in Portugal that decriminalization has been a success. The debate in Portugal has shifted rather dramatically to minor adjustments in the existing arrangement. There is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. Join us for a discussion about Glenn Greenwald's field research in Portugal and what lessons his findings may hold for drug policies in other countries.

[You can] watch this forum live online at Friday, April 3, 2009 at 12 [noon Eastern (Toronto, London, ON) time].

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

It's a fun line, but where does it come from?

The line is from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II and comes in Act 4, Scene II from the mouth of Dick the butcher, a follower of the rebel Jack Cade:

CADE: Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows
reformation. There shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped
pot; shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony
to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in
common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to
grass: and when I am king, as king I will be,--

ALL: God save your majesty!

CADE: I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;
all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree
like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

CADE: Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled
o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:
but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since. [...]

Many lawyers are the first to note that these words are taken from the mouth of a villain in the service of a rebel and stand for the proposition that lawyers must be eliminated if this foul revolution is to take place. Others, to say the least, disagree. Seth Finkelstein, in his post "`The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers' - it's a lawyer joke" notes the following:

"The audience must have doubled over in laughter at this. Far from "eliminating those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution" or portraying lawyers as "guardians of independent thinking" [as some lawyers have posited], it's offered as the best feature imagined of yet for utopia. It's hilarious. A very rough and simplistic modern translation would be "When I'm the King, there'll be two cars in every garage, and a chicken in every pot" "AND NO LAWYERS". It's a clearly lawyer-bashing joke. This is further supported by the dialogue just afterwards [i.e. the bit about lambskin and wax].
[...]
He might just as well have been describing "shrink-wrap" software licensing agreements today in the last sentence. To understand what Cade is saying here, you have to know that documents of the time were likely parchment, and sealed with wax. So when he says "Some say the bees stings; but I say, 'tis the bee's wax". he's making an ironic comment somewhat akin to "Some men rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen". And the fact that he himself is an evil man only serves to heighten the irony, not discredit the sentiment - the more evil he is, the more the contrast is apparent."

I'm only in part agreement with Finkelstein here. This exchange is promptly followed by the brief but nightmare farce of the Clerk of Chatham being brought in, accused of being able to read and write and suffering murder as a result as a result of a pseudo-trial. A villain is a villain, and whether the rebels want to kill noble lawyers or nasty ones is rather beside the point so far as the quote is concerned. The "jus' folks" of the rebellion want the lawyers bumped off and the crowd must have loved that bit, if we accept Finkelstein's guess. Shakespeare was a playwright, after all, so playing to the crowd was what he did for his humble living and I doubt that the folks in the crowd liked lawyers any more than the average man today. But one can't avoid the fact that there is definitely an element of "yeah, and look at who wants the lawyers gone: these ignorant, murderous fools" in this scene of the play: Shakespeare wants the laugh from the audience and he also wants to show what a bunch of psychotic cretins this bunch are. Trying to slot the quote into just one category diminishes, I think, our realization that, Great Writer! aside Shakespeare was really good at keeping an audience happy.

I refuse to take sides on this famous quote: being a lawyer is no guarantee of saintliness: some are monsters, and their deaths are not to be mourned. Others are struck down trying to make the world better. Most of us are neither, naturally. Enlisting Shakespeare into a debate is probably not only a fool's errand but also missing the more wonderful point. Shakespeare should be enjoyed as magic, as music, as fun. If I started being overworried about precise facts in Shakespeare then I'd be obliged to dislike Richard III's magnificent rendering of that king as one of the best villains ever in literature, even though Richard was unfairly maligned , certainly was innocent of the crimes of which he is accused .... and I'm pretty darned sure that he didn't murder his nephews.

My recommendation? Sit down and enjoy the play. And if you don't I'll send some witches after you.

Augustine's Law No. XXXVII

"Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much."

Augustine's Laws, © 1997, Norman R. Augustine.

The Networkers

Camberwell House is a member of The Networkers.

The Networkers is a dynamic group of business entrepreneurs that meets every Friday morning from 6:55 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. The main purpose of the group is to help grow each other's business by providing leads for new business opportunities.

The group is also a support system for small business operators who are often the sole proprietor/only employee of the businesses they own. Members share information such as where they got business cards for a great price, who built their web site, or how to fill out government remittance forms. Of course, members often use the professional services of other group members.

Our group admits only one member per profession so that group members are not competing against one another. Occasionally, we go out in search of people in specific professions that we think will complement our group.

Keep your eye on the blog for profiles and details of Networkers member businesses.

What is "Equity" and how is it different from common law and statutory law?

Defined

Put in a nutshell, it's when the court concerns itself with fairness. More formally, Black's Legal Dictionary defines it as:

Justice administered according to fairness as contrasted with the strictly formulated rules of the common law. [...] A system of jurisprudence collateral to, and in some cases independent of, "law"; the object of which is to render the administration of justice more complete, by affording relief where the courts of law are incompetent [meaning that they do not have the authority, rather than the colloquial definition of `can not by reason of deficiency'!] to give it...

Examples of equitable principles are "estoppel", "constructive trusts", "unjust enrichment" and "rectification". (Please see my blog posts on rectification here, here, here and here for details on rectification. There will be posts later on estoppel, constructive trusts and unjust enrichment.)

Duhaime's legal dictionary (an excellent source of in-depth definitions and explanations) provides an excellent short history of this area of the law, here. In that summary, Duhaime's quotes the famous English jurist and legal commentator Sir William Blackstone when he points out the danger in becoming too attached to equity as a tool of law:

"Law, without equity, though hard and disagreeable, is much more desirable for the public good than equity without law, which would make every judge a legislator, and introduce most infinite confusion, as there would be almost as many different rules of action laid down in our courts as there are differences of capacity and sentiment in the human mind." (I Blk. Comm. 62)

I must confess myself in agreement with Blackstone. A system of public, known and predictable law which uses equity as a tool to adjust the system to ensure fair results is far better than an all-over-the-map system based on thousands of individual judge's views of what is "fair" or not.

Common law v. statute law v. equity ... and different courts?

Duhaime's has this to say about the differences:

Equity law developed after the common law to offset the rigid interpretations medieval English judges were giving the common law.

For hundreds of years, there were separate courts in England and its dependents: one for common law and one for equity (aka Chancery) and the decisions of the latter, where they conflicted, prevailed.

It is a matter of legal debate whether or not common law and equity are now "fused." It is certainly common to speak of the "common law" to refer to the entire body of English law, including common law and equity.

While it might be a matter of debate whether or not common law and equity are fused it is important to note that the courts which apply them are: Ontario does not separate its courts of common law and equity. The Superior Court of Justice, the Divisional Court, the Court of Appeal and Canada's Supreme Court are all courts which can and do apply statutory law and common law and equity.

Previously done:
Common law.
Statutory law.